The purpose of the proposed research program is to study the structure of the vitreous macromolecules and the nature of the interactions between these constituents to detemine the structures responsible for the gel-state of the tissue. The specific projects are: to characterize the terminal peptides and glycopeptides from bovine vitreous collagen; to isolate and characterize the vitreous specific proteins and proteoglycans, to perform light scattering and viscosity measurements on bovine vitreous hyaluronic acid and to perform immunolocalization studies.